From the Earth to the Moon: Solar Power's Future as a Clean Energy

Of all the clean energy concepts, solar power is one of the most accessible. Solar panels can be found everywhere from small household gadgets to over the rooftops of an increasing number of homes throughout the world. The United States, along with several European and Asian countries, have been working on developing an efficient way of making solar power a viable alternative to fossil fuels and a source of accessible clean energy. One June 3rd, American company Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne, best known for their work in aerospace technologies, was awarded a $10.2 million dollar contract to build a Concentrated Solar Power Tower with Thermal Storage in California.

The goal of the tower is to transfer the heat and energy contained in sunlight to power a steam reactor that would provide direct electricity for clean energy. Much of the heat would be transferred into a form of salt that would be purchased from SolarReserve, a solar power technology company, which would then be used to heat the water contained in the steam reactor. The goal of the project and the reason behind the awarded grant by the Department of Energy is to oversee the costs of solar power being lowered to a point in which it could be competitive with fossil fuel companies.

Projects like this one have appeared in California before and match those in found in other countries. The Topaz Solar Farm project, announced in 2008 with a projected completion of 2010-2011, is being developed with the intent of using a large area of land covered in solar panels to provide renewable clean energy to the outlying areas. It is part of a project by the California state government to make at least 20% of their overall energy production come from clean energy by this year.

Recent explorations into clean energy in China have also caused higher interest in Chinese solar power. A large majority of China's current energy source comes from coal powered electricity causing pollution rates in several parts of the country to be very high. In the interest of coming up with a viable clean energy solution, Chinese green corporations and the Chinese government have been investigating the usefulness of solar energy, a part of China's promise to convert at least 10%-20% of their energy services into renewable clean energy by the year 2020. While this move is seen primarily as a political move (China has long tried to find a way to make themselves independent of the needs of foreign oil and fuels), the impact it would have on the clean energy industry would be immense.

The accessibility of solar power has even begun extending into plans for the future of space travel. Perhaps spurred on by Japan's decision to have a solar powered base on the Moon by 2020, Japanese research company Shimizu Corporation has announced their dream to build a band of solar panels around the equator of the Moon at some time far in the future. Their hope is to harness the constant sunlight the Moon is subjected to and then convert it to microwave and laser power in order to send it back to Earth, creating a constant and large source of clean energy.

While plans like Shimizu Corporation's are likely to not be achieved within many of our lifetimes, we are poised to see the realization of several solar power projects across the globe in the next decade. It would seem that with all of the clean energy initiatives we see every year, solar power aims to remain one of the most accessible power sources for many more years to come.

Photo Credit: Flickr